The Bird in the Cage
by SheWhoRantsTooMuch
Summary: Childhood schizophrenia is... difficult, to say the least. Rated T for implied self harm. Might continue as a trilogy if people like it.


[5:24 AM]

People take things for granted, and never realize it until they have to make due without those things. The tired cliche is overused, but true. Rarely does anyone savor freedom until they find themselves locked in a cage. As such, you really can't grasp how precious the sense of reality is until it's been stolen from you.

This is what occurred to Dipper Pines as he woke up before dawn in Gravity Falls, Oregon.

(Or, that is, an incomplete model of it.)

It was as if some higher being had used the space of an empty existence to construct a perfect replica of the boy's surroundings, then spirited the child away one night as he slept in his bed. He woke up scared, the world around him familiar and foreign all at once. Mabel would giggle, her pig would snort. Tourists would exclaim, their cameras would click.

But it wasn't right. Glitches in the coding of the artificial reality were everywhere. Shadows cast by no one roamed unnoticed throughout the day. Phantom rodents burrowed into walls and scampered across countertops. Bed sheets reeked of oranges when there had been none on them the night before. Things that bothered him deeply but tried to ignore.

Worst of all was the goat. The creature stalked him relentlessly, those yellow eyes burning into the back of his neck from dusk to dawn. Worse was when the animal had started commanding him of what he must and mustn't do. ('You must never tell a soul of what you observe,' Gompers spoke to him. 'Disobedience will not be tolerated.')

Whether the creature's warnings held any truth, the fear of it was awful and Dipper was paranoid. Had he been brave, he might've confronted the forces that pained him and fought back. But since the world surrounding him lived oblivious to his peril, his courage failed him and he obeyed.

Dipper's socked feet made no sound as they navigated their way to the kitchen. Weak light from the yet to rise sun painted the world in black and white, resulting in a setting that brought back memories of patrolling his great uncle's mind.

He had taken to rising before dawn to complete his chores without interacting with the rest of the household. If he didn't, the urge to cry for help might be too great to resist. Besides, cleaning made him feel good. It was nice to be in control, even if it was only over how tidy the kitchen was.

Dipper had just finished sweeping the floorboards when the murmuring in his head gave way to intelligible speech. (This is not real. You are dead. This is an illusion of your deceased mind.) Unimpressed by the voice's words, he shrugged to himself before setting the broom aside. A sponge was grabbed from the sink, the object given a harsh squeeze before being set to work. So what if he was dead? It would be a solid explanation, at least.

But if he was dead, wouldn't his family know about it? Maybe he was becoming a vampire, and not the hot kind. However, that didn't add up very well either. He hadn't been bitten recently, and the journal never mentioned hearing things when it listed symptoms of vampirism. If that wasn't it, then what was? Why was he hearing voices telling him to press a clothing iron onto his forehead? Still pondering over this, the boy labored over the counters until he was satisfied with the reflection he saw in them. The dishes had already been scrubbed clean the night before, so it looked like he had some time to ki-

"Dipper? What in the world are you doing up so early?" The voice belonged to Ford. The twelve year old startled at the sound of his name, whirling around with the rag clutched to his chest. "Wha-what am I doing? Is that what you asked?" The older man nodded. "I-I'm scrubbing the counters! Gotta get the dirt out, ya know?" (You sound too desperate. He knows you're scared.)

"So you've been cleaning?" The younger boy gave a sheepish smile and nodded eagerly. "I see you've swept the floorboards as well. Tell me, have you been waking up before dawn to start your chores?"

"Yeah, I... haven't been sleeping well." (He knows you're lying. He can read your mind.) Ford crossed his arms, giving the boy a hard look. Early light of dawn filtered through the window, hitting his glasses in a manner that obscured his eyes.

(The elder man was the incarnation of higher judgement, his six fingers signifying his status as a deity. Able to cast a soul to heaven or hell with a single flick of the wrist, he sees none of the world's colors. Only the black and white of good and evil, yin and yang.) His uncle opened his mouth to speak and Dipper winced, certain that the man before him was sentencing him to his eternal damnation.

Instead, his fingers ran through his greying hair before he gesturing for him to sit down at the kitchen table. As the two settled into their seats, Ford folded his arms in a manner that resembled a school principal about to discipline an unruly student.

"Dipper, you've been acting... off. You didn't eat dinner last night, you've hardly spoken to anyone this past week, you've been more paranoid than ever, you've been having this blank look on your face..." Ford threw his hands up in exasperation, causing his nephew to flinch. "Even now you're looking at me like I might dive across the table and strangle you! I..." His great uncle paused to cough into his sleeve.

"Please, tell me what's wrong. I want to help, I can help, but I won't be able to do that if you don't tell me. I'm begging you, give me something to go off of." The concern on Ford's face made him want to cry. (Was Gompers listening?) Telling anyone was against the rules, but if the goat was elsewhere it might slip by him. Still, Dipper wasn't sure if that was a risk he would be willing to take. The older man caught onto his hesitance right away, unable to take silence for an answer.

"If you can't tell me all of it," he added, "do you think you can at least tell me where it started?" The uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice was so genuine that Dipper caved in and cleared his throat to speak.

"Well... it first happened two weeks ago." Dipper rubbed the back of his head, glancing down to kick at the rat near his feat although he knew it was invisible to the rest of the world. "I was walking in town and I was near the church with the statue in front of it, you know the one. It was Sunday because the pastor was closing the doors before the service started. He waved at me and I waved back. But then the church bells started ringing and something was wrong. The church..." Biting his lip, Dipper stopped for a moment until his uncle encouraged him to continue.

"The church, it stopped being what it was. I hear the choir singing from inside, but it sounded like it had a hidden meaning. Like they were trapped and they hid a message in the song that only I could hear. And then I got a vision of something, in my head. There was a humid sunny forest with emerald leaves and...

"And I knew that the people, the choir, they were trapped in the church. Someone was keeping them there so that they wouldn't be able to go to heaven when judgement day came. They were so sad that they were singing like birds in cages and that I had to save them, I had to open the doors and let them out. I was walking up the steps to do that when I saw a yellow cat. It looked me straight in the eye and I thought that I was a lion in disguise, so I ran..."

Dipper trailed off again, this time finishing the story. How did his words sound so... clumsy, so draft? Ford, who had been listening intently as he spoke, rose from his seat and turned to observe the sunrise, his hands folded behind his back. The sun had grown stronger now, a dull monochrome world giving away to hints of color.

"Dipper, I think I know what's wrong with you, but I need to..." Ford was pacing the room now, stroking his chin as he mused to himself. "I need to look over some things before coming to any final conclusions, and of course we'll need a professional diagnosis, but going off of what you told me..."

He looked at his nephew with a thousand yard gaze. "Dipper, I think you might have early onset schizophrenia."

[8:23 AM]

Sitting cross legged on the floor to watch tv with his sister wasn't something that Dipper did much anymore. Usually the boy would've avoided such as pastime, out of fear of his thoughts being broadcasted for all to see. Today, however, his intuition gave him the green light. Good fortune was on his side, as the goat's fixation on him wavered for now. Several hours had passed since the conversation with his great uncle, and the punishment still had not come.

But luck came with drawbacks, and harsh ones at that. The voices that had been mild earlier were now racking his head, overlapping and contradicting one another.

Maybe he should tell Ford about it. He didn't know what to think about what his great uncle had told him earlier that morning, but he had spent thirty years in a different world. Surely-

Wait, a whole different world. The phase brought back the memory of flipping through his history book in class last May; landing on a section describing indigenous religions. A passage touching on Shintoism had caught his eye. Apparently, shrines were built in places of great natural beauty, to emphasize the connection between people and nature.

Below the paragraph was a picture of a stone shrine gate guarding the entrance to a bamboo forest. The torii had a sacred vibe about it, as if it for something more than a metaphorical relationship. Like it signified the border between one world's end and another world's beginning.

There were no Shinto shrines in Oregon, but he recalled passing under a sign welcoming them to Gravity Falls during the bus ride to their great uncle. Upon pointing out the sign to his twin as she sat next to him idly, the atmosphere between them changed from boredom to sheer wonder. Had that sign marked their arrival into a new world? One caught between the physical realm and the astral plane?

"Dipper!" The voice sounded muffled, although it came from right next to him. He looked to his side to see his twin on her feet, hands hips in an pose of accusation. The tv had been turned off. "I've been trying to talk to you for the last two minutes!"

For a second he faltered, panic clawing at his stomach. Had the television picked on on the thoughts radiating from his head despite his gut feeling? "Candy just texted me. She wants to know if we can meet up with her and Grenda in town." Dipper held back a sigh of relief. "She wants both of us? Weird. They're usually only interested in hanging out with you."

Mabel pursed her lips in thought before replying. "Yeah, but's a beautiful day outside and you need some fresh air! All you do is work and read that dorky journal, you gotta have SOME social interaction!" Seeing the unconvinced look on her twin's face, she continued with extra enthusiasm. "C'mon, bro-bro! It'll be fun! We'll go get ice cream and hang out at the cemetery and look for pigeons with extra feet! It'll be great! Please?" Unable to resist his sister's pleading, the boy nodded. "Well, if you insist."

The boy had risen slowly to avoid stumbling from lightheadedness, but it was all in vain when Mabel grabbed her brother's wrist to pull him towards the exit. The last thing he heard before the door swung open was his sister yelling to Grunkle Stan that they would be going out for awhile. Dipper blinked as the sunlight hit his eyes, letting the tug of his sister's hand around his wrist guide him through the forest until he adjusted. His feet were clumsy and unsure as they treaded the dirt path.

The sun was too bright, making his dizziness worse. Mabel noticed her brother's difficulty, glancing back at him every so often to ensure that he hadn't wandered off into the wilderness to meet his doom. The action stung, although he said nothing of it. Was he really so weak and helpless in the eyes of his family? (We are all weak. Only the true are strong. The true must be shown the night.)

The woods sprawled out around the path until they reached the bridge into town, everything set out as if there were a particular order to it. His twin was jabbering on about something, but he paid no mind to her. A monster glanced up at him, the form just visible in the water below. It opened its mouth to flash a grin of stained teeth before disappearing.

The patch of dirt where Gideon's Tent of Telepathy once stood had come into view. Mabel's attempts at conversation ceased as she stuck her tongue out at the area.

Maybe Ford was right. Maybe he did have schizophrenia. On days where the wrongness of the distorted reality left him staring at the texture of the floorboards for hours at a time, he felt a nagging suspicion that something wasn't right. It wasn't normal for adolescent boys to take orders from a goat, or to avoid TV sets that broadcasted their thoughts.

His sister grabbed his hand, leading him through a short cut across the patch of trees next to Gleeful Used Cars. The memorial to the false town founder came into view, and Mabel ran off to join her friends waiting for her on the steps of the church.

Dipper hung back in the cover of the oak trees, observing the yellow eyed man that loomed underneath the statue of Nathan Northwest. The stranger looked at him and shouted obscenities before storming off. If any of the girls noticed it, they paid the incident no mind.

The clear sky slid above them; endless and suffocating. A blackbird sung a warning from the tree above.

Mabel had been discussing which ice cream flavor tasted the best when she stopped mid sentence, her expression morphed into that of a deer in headlights. Intuition screaming, she turned around and sprinted towards her brother. Something wasn't right. Something bad was going on.

"Dipper! What's the matter?" she grabbed her twin's hand, alarmed by the terror on his face. He didn't look hurt, but he yanked his arm away from her as if her touch had burned him. Upon their eyes meeting, an awful silence feel between them that lasted for lifetimes. Despite the heat, she felt cold. Gone was the cheerful air of the summer day. The twin she had known her entire life now looked at her with terror, as if her facial features had distorted into a sort of body horror.

Automatically her hand rose to her cheek to feel for any gross wart or extra finger that might've sprouted, although she knew there were none.

There was nothing wrong with her.

That could only mean that there was something wrong with Dipper.

Candy and Grenda called to her from the church steps, but they seemed farther away than ever. Dipper opened his mouth to speak, but nothing right came out. The person standing before him was not his sister. He did not recognize her, did not feel the same sense of rightness surrounding her that had been present since they were toddlers.

The stranger was chirping now, screeching nonsense in a shrill voice that rang in his ears. Holding his hands out in a signal of surrender, he tried to hush her, tried to silence the awful sound. This only upset her further, causing ugly gasps between her babble.

Unable to stand it any longer, he turned around and sprinted into the safety of the woods. The girl let out a cry of dismay and pursued him for a few yards, but he was too fast. It wasn't long before she halted and turned back, calling to someone for help. Even after the chaser had vanished, his feet pounded against the earth as if every monster imaginable were on his tale. (You can't stop. They'll catch you! They eat your fingers!)

Tears streaming down his cheeks went unnoticed until they began to blur his vision. Adrenaline giving way to misery, the boy stumbled to a halt in the backyard of a cabin. The place look to have been deserted long ago; one of the windows was cracked, ivy clung to the side of the building. Leaning against the structure for support, Dipper began to weep his despair. He couldn't do it anymore. Living in a fake world was too much. Not being able to connect with his sister, it was more than he could take.

There had to be some way to get back to reality. He would do it, no matter how much it hurt. Steadying his breathing, he began to search for solutions. There had to be an answer somewhere. (Burning will work. Look, there's a fire over there.) Dipper looked up to see an unattended junk pile burn in the yard, sheltered underneath the shade of an old fir tree.

The flames beckoned in a peculiar manner, as if the forces that compelled it to burn were calling him towards them. He froze, knowing what was going to happen next but scared to go through with it until the voices urged him onwards. A presence was felt behind him, ready to shove him forward if he hesitated for too long.

Each step seemed to make the ground moan under his feet, as if he were advancing across thin ice. He held his hands above the flare; close enough to feel the heat brush against his palms. Screwing his eyes shut, he forced them down further towards the source of the blaze. A crow sounded from its branch in the tree above, oblivious to the scene unfolding below it.

By the time Ford and Stan's desperate search for him came to an end, the sun had set. Dipper was out cold, curled up on the ground next to a pile of smoldering rubble. Burn wounds scarred the boy's hands.

[11:56 PM]

Jolting awake from unconsciousness with a gasp, Dipper sat upright to find himself in a dark hospital room. Pale moonlight filtered through the window, casting onto the floor in a neat rectangle. Clean sheets covered him, and a paper bracelet rubbed his wrist. It must've been awhile since his breakdown near the cabin. Feeling much calmer now that reality had returned, the boy observed the bandages covering his hands. They didn't hurt, but the sensation of pulsating flesh was less than pleasant. Great Uncle Ford had crossed his arms atop the railing of the hospital bed, falling asleep by his nephew's side.

The familiar presence was a welcome comfort. The boy gave Ford's hand a gentle squeeze, smiling as his uncle sighed in his sleep. But then, he noticed something new. A deep scar ran around the base of the man's pinkie finger. It looked as though someone had tried to remove the digit by looping a string around it and tugging as hard as they could.

He looked back at his own damage hands, now beginning to sting underneath the bandages. Had Ford once have in to the same commands of self harm? Was that why he was the only one to confront him when he suspected that something was wrong? Sighing, he laid back down to stare at the white panels that made up the ceiling.

In the hall outside the room, a nurse wheeled an IV to another room. A doctor yawned as he flipped through a patient's medical records. An overhead light flickered. A woman quietly sobbed in the waiting room. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper spotted a hairy shape scurrying across the wall. It paused to hiss a threat (You're dead! You're worthless!) before leaping into the trash bin. He wondered what it would take to make the rodent and all others like it disappear for good.


End file.
